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Cake Shots PH: Serving cupcakes with a flair

Taking that leap of faith feels great when you know you’ve done something good. That’s how former BPO manager and now the owner of Cake Shots, Patricia Blardony, felt whenever she looked back to the early stages of her growing desserts and pastry business.

Patricia took inspiration from her grandmother’s Rum Raisin Pudding recipe to start her business about a year ago. That combined with her love of food made a great tandem - much like her alcohol-laced cupcakes and pastries.

After several bottles and weeks of frequent hits and misses in the kitchen, Patricia stuck to adding liquor to her pastries - similar to what her grandmother did. When her friends asked for more, she knew she had done something good.

“I decided I didn’t want something to just look pretty, I wanted to do something that tasted great so I made sure that everything is authentic and of good quality,” she said.

Without any background on baking, Patricia stuck to her gut and relied on her strong palate to create pastries that are balanced and well thought out. Ironically, she admits to being a non-drinker and adds that creating the perfect mix comes from her love of food to find the perfect balance. She said that she also owed it to the internet after showing her a thing or two about the basics of baking. “Well the internet is an amazing thing. They give you good and bad stuff; you try something out and you don't like it, you can just tweak things,” she said.

Starting one’s own business wasn’t as easy as pie. Even after a year of being in business, Patricia still does most of the leg work - baking, frosting, packaging, transacting with clients, and at times even delivering. She adds that when she’s not baking for clients, she’s up to baking something new or designing new ideas for her store.

Now with more than six cupcake flavors including a remake of her grandmother’s original recipe, the Vita’s Pudding with brandy caramel sauce, Cake Shots has come a long way a year following the birth of her Facebook page where it all began. Her liquor infused cupcakes include the Cosmopolitan, and the Daiquiri. She also has the Bailey’s Original Red Velvet and the Black Label Chocoholic which she can do in alcoholic and non-alcoholic concoctions, and the Carrot’s Delight, which is entirely kid-friendly. They also offer specialized cakes and pastries, which are customized for clients and events.

Getting noticed on the online scene

Being noticed as a pastry brand laced with liquor was a different story and it came in unexpectedly. Patricia heavily relied on word of mouth and the power of social media to keep her business growing.

After starting out on Facebook, Cake Shots grew into promoting their brand via Instagram and Twitter until they eventually set up their own website several months later.

Using Viber and WhatsApp as a means of communicating with her clients, Patricia was able to reach clients ranging as far as Alabang and even a few in the US. “It’s amazing how far the buzz about Cake Shots has gotten around,” she said. She added that while her Facebook page has done wonders for her online presence, it was her immediate response to customer service and pledge to quality that gained her customer’s trust and kept them asking for more.

Despite her growing market, she finds that convincing people to try alcohol-laced cupcakes is more of a challenge than sustaining her business’ online presence. “When you try to make them taste something, and they know that it has liquor in it they go ay ayoko cause there's alcohol”

Though that didn’t stop her from taking a hold of this niche market, which composed mostly of women and college students. Most clients come back for orders knowing that there is a distinct yet addicting taste that they can only find in a pastry made by Cake Shots.

Someday, Patricia hopes to open her own one-stop shop for everything desserts – of course with the touch of alcohol as the brand’s niche. She sees this developing further after her recent tie-up with Shopify and they invited her to open an account of her own.

Despite thinking about setting up her own kiosk in an establishment, Patricia still thinks that the internet and social media will remain as her primary means of communicating with her clients. “All of this I think is driven towards just ensuring there’s a brand and strengthening the brand. So that when we actually create a brick and mortar shop there is a brand out there that people look forward to,” Patricia added.